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It all began with a wagon ride across the parking lot to the displays on the athletic fields. After a long chilly dark spring, the sun was shining. The cows were mooing. The ducks were quacking, and the children were giggling as they progressed in small groups from one station to another.
“Everybody looks forward to Farm Day,” said Sara Casto, Agriculture teacher and Future Farmers of America, or FFA, Advisor. “We have 15 standing committees and each plans an activity.”
Planning for Farm Day activity stations took months. Those activities included games, climbing on a tractor, crafts, and meeting lots of animals. On display were goats, cows, calves, ducks, rabbits, a miniature horse and baby turkeys. Some are projects for this year’s fair and others are former fair projects that became pets.
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Megan Hodge was thrilled to introduce the students to her first animal project, a 4 month old Holstein dairy feeder.
I was fascinated by the 3 week old baby turkeys that Justin Paulus displayed. It was hard to imagine that those cute little balls of feathers would someday look like wild turkeys.
The miniature horse looked more at home with the kindergarteners than the adults.
Kacie Sizer held her pet ducks, Daisy and Turbo so that the young visitors could pet them. These animals seemed to love all the attention as much as the students did meeting them.
Meanwhile Senior Emily Kahlert was patiently assisting each student who wanted to sit in the seat of her family’s tractor, a DX 90 Deutz.
The students were divided into small groups each guided by high school students who encouraged the young ones to ask questions, and get involved in the activities.
In one activity I thought the students were looking for a needle in a haystack, but actually they were searching for letters to answer a puzzle.
Although we live in the country, not all the young folk in our community have access to farm animals. Or if they do they are only familiar with one type of animal. I grew up on a pig farm, so I really enjoy spending time with other farm animals like dairy feeders, goats, or ducks.
Farm day was bright and colorful. Some of the classes wore color coordinated class t-shirts, which I think was ingenious on their teachers part. Most of the high school students were wearing the red 2018 Farm Day t-shirt, which was designed by Alex Cunningham. I loved the words on the back of it.
“We aren’t just cows and plows… we are leaders and achievers, learners and servers, teams with dreams, we are FFA.”
And, well, that just about sums it all up, except that it didn’t mention fun and there was a lot of fun going on that day.
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